THE VOLUPTUOUS VEGETARIAN: Birthday Cake!

My delicious little boy turned three today. Now, I don't give him any foods made with sugar and white flour, but if you are a regular reader of this blog, you most likely know this already. At risk of being labelled a helicopter mother, I am very selective about what he eats. I make all his food, and he has never tasted candy aside from the occasional morsel of exquisite european dark chocolate. For his birthday I wanted to make him a cake that was truly a cake -- one that would please a 3 year old who is just starting to become keenly aware of what a 'birthday' means, and one that would pass muster with his grandfather who believes healthfood has no place in desserts.

I manage to accomplish this goal.

I started with my son's favourite vegan brownie recipe (from way back in November), but altered it slightly, and un-veganed it. The addition of eggs were helpful, in my opinion, because it can be harder to achieve lift in a full size cake than in a baby cake.

My son and I decided to bake a pretty fancy layer cake, and once I decided any old oven safe dish would do, we got quite creative. The secret, gentle readers, is lining the bottom with parchment, and using butter or coconut oil liberally as a release agent. More on that below.

Together, my son and I came up with this fancy quintuple layer design, and completed the look with delectable glazes, and some naughty chocolate morsels. I confess we used milk chocolate morsels as well as dark chocolate morsels, and I certainly think the visual effect was worth it.

I made an almond butter glaze to go between the layers, and then a chocolate glaze to cover the whole thing. The contrast was pleasing, and the cake itself was a big hit.

Now, if you are going to bake a cake, it's always really helpful to have it come out of the pan unscathed. One can always resort to the tried and true flour and butter method of cake release -- grease the pan generously, then coat the butter with an even layer of flour, shaking out the extra. However, I have to tell you that lining the bottom of the pan with a piece of parchment does the trick like nothing else. I recommend coating the pan with coconut oil, putting in your sheet of parchment, and giving that a bit of a coating too. I used a well-used silicone muffin cup for our smallest cake, and didn't bother lining that. However, silicone holds its oil well, and after a couple of years of using these cups, ain't nothing gonna stick to those suckers. If yours are new, you must coat them the first few times you use them. And I find if I run silicone bakeware through the dishwasher, I absolutely have to give it a good coating of coconut oil the next time I use it.

Cutting the parchment to fit the baking dishes

Liberally coating the dishes with coconut oil

Liberally coating the parchment with coconut oil

My motley crew of baking dishes in the oven. I put my single muffin cup in an oven proof bowl because silicone is not so self-supporitng, and I didn't want it to tip over on the rungs ...

The resulting layers, cooling prior to use

This recipe made 5 layers, but 3 of them were quite small. So, as it stands, it might be adequate for a nice triple layer cake using smallish pans, or a double layer cake using larger ones.

Chocolate Brownie Cake:

ingredients:

1/2 cup extra virgin coconut oil

2 1/4 cups hot water

1 1/2 cups pitted honey dates

1/2 cup coconut nectar

1/4 cup coconut sugar

2 tbsp raw apple cider vinegar

2 xl organic eggs

2 tsp egg replacer, + 1/2 cup water, mixed together

2 tsp sea salt

2 tsp ceylon cinnamon

1 tsp regular cinnamon

2 tbsp ground vanilla

a little black pepper

1 cup + 2 tbsp raw cacao powder

3/4 cup pecan meal

1 1/2 cup almond flour (JK Gourmet)

3/4 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 cups kamut flour (finely milled, please)

1/2 - 3/4 cup callebaut dark chocolate morsels (or other similar quality dark chocolate chips)

directions:

preheat your oven to 345, and choose your baking pans

1. pour the hot water over the dates, but first check to make sure there are no pits in your dates

2. allow the dates to sit and soften for about 10 minutes. This is a good time to prepare your pans with coconut oil and baking parchment.

3. add the coconut oil, coconut nectar, coconut sugar, apple cider vinegar, cinnamons, salt, vanilla, and black pepper

4. puree the dates using an immersion blender

5. making sure the concoction is not too hot, add your eggs and blend again

6. add your egg replacer and water and blend again

7. add your cacao, and either mix by hand or use your immersion blender

8. mix in the pecan meal

9. mix in the almond flour

10. mix in the bakng soda very thoroughly

11. add the kamut flour, and fold gently until combined. You do not want to over mix once you've added the kamut flour

12. finally stir in the chocolate morsels, and pour/scoop the batter into your prepare pans.

13. bake the cakes for approx 30 minutes, until they spring back when poked. The challenge of course if using different pans of different sizes and different materials is to judge when each one is done, because they will all take slightly different lengths of time.

14. When fully baked, remove from the oven to a cooling rack.

15. Once cooled somewhat, you may remove the cakes from the pans -- I find running an instrument down the sides of the pan can be helpful for releasing the cake from the pan.

16. Cool on racks until fully cool. The cakes may now be assembled, or wrapped well and saved for later.

To decorate your cake, you might like to try glazing. It is fun and easy, and looks interesting. I made an almond butter glaze to hold the layers together, and then coated the whole thing liberally with a chocolate glaze. Yes, and chocolate, but that's up to you.

Almond Butter glaze:

ingredients:

1/4 cup coconut oil

1/4 cup almond butter

3 tbsp coconut sugar

a pinch of salt

2 pinches of ground vanilla

2 pinches of ceylon cinnamon

directions:

1. melt the almond butter and the coconut oil

2. add the coconut sugar, the cinnamon, the vanilla, and the sea salt

3. mix well.

4. This works great between layers, and I recommend using it on chilled layers.

Chocolate glaze:

ingredients:

1/2 cup coconut oil

1/4 cup coconut nectar

7 tbsp raw cacao powder

a pinch of sea salt

a pinch of ground vanilla

directions:

1. melt the coconut oil

2. add the coconut nectar, and stir well

3. add the raw cacao, sea salt, and vanilla

4. stir well.

5. For best results, pour over chilled layers.

To assemble the layers, I made the almond butter glaze. I chose a plate large enough to hold the largest layer of my cake. Taking the layers out of the refrigerator, I put the largest one on the bottom. I then poured some of the glaze into the middle of the layer. I put the next layer on, and repeated this until all the layers were on. The chilled cake helps set the glaze a little so the layers don't go moving around on you. I then put the whole thing in the freezer for about 10 minutes, because that makes the glaze harden up in a hurry. While the cake in all its assembled glory was in the freezer, I made the chocolate glaze. I then removed this cold cake from the freezer, and began to pour the glaze on it, from the top, also a a little on each layer to make sure it was nicely coated.

If you want to attach anything to the glaze -- such as the evil little Callebaut morsels that we chose -- you'll need to work fast because they won't stick to a hardened glaze. However, if your glazed cake is too set, you can just take a little of the remaining glaze and dab it on the back of each morsel as you go.

And the results are a cake that has no cane sugar, mainly uses sweeteners that won't spike your blood sugar, is made with real food, taste great, looks great, and is kind of sort of good for you. Especially if you leave off the chocolate morsels (the milk chocolate doubly especially). No food dye. No artificial oils. No refine white flour, no refined sugar. So, all in all it's a reasonable compromise for a cake that is just as birthday-ish as it should be.